Scenario Definition Language for Modeling & Simulation (M&S)

Harmonia’s eXtensible Scenario Definition Meta-language (xScenario) represents scenarios that drive models and simulations (M&S) in XML. Harmonia’s solution allows model and simulation developers to use xScenario as the one language for defining scenarios and simulations to facilitate interoperability between M&S tools, minimize the transformations necessary to incorporate legacy M&S applications, and reduce the amount of redundant development necessary to realize common functions. Additionally, xScenario incorporates the ability to transform syntactic as well as semantic data. xScenario borrows from Harmonia’s experience in designing the User Interface Mark-up Language and the Legacy Code Modeling Language, two meta-languages designed to address representation problems in the interface definition and legacy code re-use domains. xScenario does not attempt to define a set of primitives that apply to all scenario domains. Instead xScenario is a meta-language that stores scenario primitives in a domain-independent XML format that abstracts the specifics of the domain away from any particular scenario. Just as XML must be combined with a schema or DTD to provide meaning, xScenario incorporates a modular domain definition to provide the scenario primitives with domain specific meaning. M&S tools are then built to utilize xScenario to provide portable scenario definitions beneath the Command and Control level. BENEFITS: Complex DoD system design requires teams that cut across companies, each with knowledge of different scenarios. xScenario can collect knowledge through sharing of scenarios. Human-Computer Interface designers, training courseware designers, and modeling and simulation practitioners will all benefit from a common and extensible representation format for scenarios. Scenarios described in domain-independent XML provide the ability to use standardized algorithms and models across Navy M&S systems, despite differing domains. The meta-language and domain-independent nature of xScenario will save money by allowing common algorithms for data analysis and conversion to be used across domains, just as is the case with the XML language today. This reduces the cost of scenario maintenance, allowing developers to focus on perfecting a single set of M&S tools instead of having to re-implement the same common functionality for multiple formats. The extensible nature of xScenario allows future M&S tools to utilize a single scenario definition language, thereby reducing the potential for data to be lost in translation of one format to another. xScenario also reduces the amount of effort necessary to allow existing M&S tools to interoperate by providing a standard intermediate format. Scenario design tools based on xScenario can be used throughout the commercial sector, ranging from transportation design to training to Human-Computer Interface design of complex enterprise systems, wherever scenario-based design or M&S are used.